Of Phobias
by TeaForRevenge
Summary: Thunderstorms make for an angry Haruhi. HaruhiHost Club


Disclaimer: Ouran is not mine.

Summary: Thunderstorms make for an angry Haruhi. (Haruhi/Host Club)

Author's note: Also called… "A most atrocious tale in which a frying pan is lost, Tamaki

bleeds to death and a thunderstorm is used as an over-used plot device."

**Of Phobias**

On a warm Saturday midday, exactly thirty-one minutes past twelve, Ranka gazed out the living room window and informed his daughter that it looked as if there would be a thunderstorm later on.

Haruhi looked up from her homework, cocked her head to the side and considered.

"I suppose I couldn't just lock myself into the cupboard and be afraid until it's all over?"

"You tried that the last two times," Ranka reminded her. "New locks are expensive, you know?"

The corners of Haruhi's mouth went down ever so slightly. "That wasn't my fault."

Her father put on his coat. "Yes, your friends are-"

"Rich bastards," she finished for him and looked with regret at the amount of homework she still had left and would now never get done today.

Ranka coughed and it sounded suspiciously like a snicker. "Anyway, have some fun."

Haruhi glared at him.

He put his hands up in mock-surrender. "Well, okay then have some not fun."

And he was out of the front door, off to work, before she got a chance to reply.

Haruhi sighed into the silence of the room, looked out the window at a heavily clouded sky and went back to her homework.

Seven minutes before three, Haruhi heard the first distant tell-tale sound that made her insides freeze.

The doorbell shrilled. 

Then, there was the very distinctive shout of: "My precious daughter, daddy has arrived!"

With nostalgia Haruhi looked at the cupboard and remembered a time when it had been just her, her phobia and silent cramped quarters.

The doorbell shrilled again.

Her homework still not finished; none of her chores done; and worst of all no Tamaki-secure lock available; Haruhi stood up and opened the front door.

Immediately, she faced a gruesome death by suffocating through being drowned in a sea of blue cashmere and unwanted affections.

"I was so worried!" Tamaki shrilled into her right ear and held her so close she could count the threads in the fabrics of his blue pullover. "Daddy thought you had gotten yourself lost into that evil cupboard again!"

"I had locked myself in there." Haruhi struggled to the surface of the sea and extracted herself from his grip with an ease born by months of Tamaki being… er… Tamaki and pure survival instinct. "And that for a reason, "she added.

"But, Haruhi-"Tamaki started to say and made as if to grab her again.

He would have succeeded, too, if her arms hadn't already been taken hostage by yet another round of the great 'let's treat the commoner as an object, not a person'-game.

"Ne, Tono, leave our toy alone."

Tamaki spluttered.

Kaoru and Hikaru strengthened their hold on her arms.

Haruhi sighed and stared ahead blankly, as the twins began to nuzzle her cheeks simultaneously.

While Tamaki's enraged battle cry of "Be gone, you vile doppelgangers!" echoed through the air and Haruhi felt herself being torn to the right, then yanked to the left and to the right all over again, the girl caught sight of blond hair and big eyes, black hair and not so big eyes.

"Haru-chan! Haru-chan!" Hunny cried and waved at her enthusiastically with a big white package in one hand and Bun-Bun in his other, from his place atop Mori's shoulders. "Look, we got cake!"

Haruhi made a small attempt to wave back, only the odds were yanking in favour of the Twins right at that moment, and her hand ended up somewhere to the right of Kaoru's shoulder and to the left of Hikaru's abdomen.

At least, she thought it ended up there.

She really, really hoped it did.

"Why, Haruhi. I never knew you felt this way," Hikaru drawled into her ear above Tamaki's screeching.

Ah, apparently it didn't.

She closed her eyes and tried not to feel too much with said hand.

In fact, she tried not to feel so hard, she didn't feel the absence of the feeling of yanking and tearing at first.

When she did, she opened her eyes and found herself standing next to Mori, his hands still on her hips and not tearing or yanking, at all.

The twins and Tamaki sulked to their right, robbed of their toy (or daughter).

Hunny bounced up and down in front of them and clutched the package to his chest almost as close as Bun-Bun.

Haruhi looked up and up and up, until her eyes met those of Takashi.

"Ah," Mori said.

"Mhm," Haruhi agreed.

"They are doing it again," Kaoru whispered to Hikaru, their clash with Tamaki already not interesting anymore.

"I know," his twin answered not quite as quietly.

"Mhm," Haruhi said.

"Ah," Mori agreed.

Hikaru shuddered. "Their non-communication communication thing is…"

"…totally creepy," Kaoru agreed and took his twin's hand.

Tamaki gave them a withering look from his sulking corner (that wasn't a corner at all, but perfectly fine for sulking) they were completely oblivious to.

Meanwhile, Haruhi was about to say something along the lines of 'Mhm.' to Mori, when a clipped measured voice cut through the air.

"It would only be polite for a hostess to invite the guests into her home."

Haruhi blinked once, twice, tore herself away from Mori's eyes and their conversation and then spotted a newly arrived Kyouya behind the twins, a laptop clutched in his hands, his glasses gleaming in the grey light of the afternoon sun.

Haruhi considered.

"You all just happened to be in the area. With a thunderstorm on the way. Exactly like the last three times."

In response, there were variations of 'Yes'.

Tamaki came out of his sulking corner that was no corner at all.

Hunny went starry-eyed.

Kyouya adjusted his glasses.

Mori made an 'Ah'-sound.

The twins gave her their best innocent not so innocent grins.

Haruhi hoped.

"Would you leave if I told you I had still homework to do?"

In response, there were variations of 'No'.

Tamaki went back into his sulking corner that was no corner at all.

Hunny went teary-eyed.

Kyouya adjusted his glasses.

Mori made an 'Ah'-sound.

The twins gave her their best not so innocent innocent grins.

Haruhi sighed. "In that case, yes, please, come all in."

There was pushing and shoving and complaining and squealing (That was more of a one time "We have cake, Kyou-chan!"-thing) and finally everyone had squeezed into the flat.

Right on cue, it started to rain.

And if Mori noticed Haruhi staring up into the sky, he just made sure to brush his hand across hers when he closed the front door behind them.

Twenty-three minutes past three, Haruhi made a desperate attempt at finishing her still considerable load of homework in the living room.

Tamaki went through the contents of some plastic bags he had brought with him and _giggled_ from time to time.

Kyouya ignored Tamaki and without pause typed on the keyboard of his laptop, he had positioned on the living room table.

Mori watched as Hunny downed the cake they were supposed to have which had by now translated into the cake Hunny, himself and him alone had.

Haruhi sat at the table, her homework before her, a grinning twin at each of her sides.

"Okay," she told them, "I need my eyes to read and an arm to write. You can have the rest. Just don't break anything."

There was a pause in Kyouya's typing, if only minutely.

Hunny downed another piece of cake.

Tamaki fainted dead away.

Mori watched.

The twin's grin grew.

They looked at each other, nodding.

At the same time Hikaru encircled her waist with his arms from the right, Kaoru did so from the left and both rested their heads on her shoulders.

"You know, moments like this are the reason…" Kaoru murmured into her left ear.

From her right shoulder Hikaru picked up in the same tone. "…why you are our favorite toy."

Haruhi just took up her pencil and went on with her homework.

A shaking hand rose up from the floor and a body soon joined in. Tamaki leaned on the table for support and pointed his still shaking hand at the twins.

"You," he cried, "Detach your attached parts from my detached daughter!"

"I don't know, Tono," Hikaru said as he buried his face in the croak of Haruhi's neck.

"Yeah," Kaoru carried on and began to play with a strand of the girl's short hair. "We are awfully comfortable here, you know?"

Tamaki spluttered for the second time that day.

Haruhi continued writing.

"Mother!" Tamaki half turned in Kyouya's direction. "Do… something! Discipline your misbegotten children!"

Kyouya looked up from his laptop and glared from Haruhi to the twins and finally to Tamaki. The light gleamed off his glasses. Then he went back to typing.

The twins snickered into Haruhi's shoulders.

Tamaki paled.

Haruhi finished history and went on to mathematics.

"But…" Tamaki stammered and his hands combed shakily through his hair. "My precious daughter… I… Did they force themselves on you?"

Haruhi paused at an especially difficult equation.

Hikaru and Kaoru nuzzled her throat.

"Or worse did those spiteful imps poison your pure virginal mind with their nasty wickedness?" By now, Tamaki had leaned so far over the table, he was face to face with the twins.

Haruhi pondered a moment.

Both of the twins gave Tamaki a look and a grin and made an extra show of snuggling up to the girl.

"You must tell daddy!" And Tamaki's hands came crashing down on Haruhi's sheet of paper; just as the solution had presented itself to her mentally. "Tell daddy why you said that!"

Haruhi rubbed at the bridge of her nose and laid her pen down on the table, right next to her schoolbooks.

"Practicality," the girl informed Tamaki eventually and looked him directly into the eyes, "I spare myself about twenty minutes of trying vainly to escape them I would rather put to use working on my homework."

Tamaki gaped at her.

"Besides, if I don't struggle, they will soon lose interest. They are like big lazy cats."

Hikaru gave her waist a squeeze at that and Kaoru laughingly hid his face in her hair.

Both of them looked decidedly smug.

"It wasn't a compliment," Haruhi let them know in the blunt way of hers and took up her pen again.

"We know," they intoned in sync, "That's what makes this so fun."

And then they pressed their lips to her forehead ever so briefly.

Meanwhile, Tamaki appeared to be entertaining the option of fainting again.

Haruhi blinked at the feeling of lips on skin; then shrugged.

"Now, Tamaki-sempai, I would like to continue with my work," she said and pointedly looked at his hands on her sheet of paper.

Tamaki stared at his hands, then at her and from there to her forehead.

"I… I… Fine!" he exclaimed, removed his hands from the table and picked up his plastic bags from the floor. "Mother, I trust you with the virtue of our chaste daughter."

Kyouya tilted his head to the side in what may be interpreted as a nod, not stopping his typing.

"And I… I will be in the kitchen." Tamaki shook the bags in his hands. "Making the most fabulous commoner's curry!" With that he left the living room.

Haruhi didn't seem to have heard.

The sound of thunder roared in the far distance.

And if Kaoru and Hikaru noticed Haruhi clutching her pen with just a bit more force than really necessary, they just made sure she felt both of their arms around her waist.

Eleven minutes past four, untrue to Haruhi's prediction, the twins had yet to lose interest.

For that reason, Haruhi had to ponder not only which solution this equation had but also which body parts were actually hers in that tangle of limbs; as something suddenly occurred to her.

She blinked, once, twice, (she was doing a lot of that that day), and tried to wrap her mind around the idea. "Did Tamaki-sempai just say… he wanted to make curry?"

"Yeah, he mentioned something along those lines," Kaoru breathed into an ear she thought was hers.

Almost as an afterthought, while his fingers traced the line of a jaw she was pretty sure was hers, Hikaru added: "Come to think of it, I didn't even know he could cook."

"He can't," Kyouya told them very matter-of-factly, his concentration still on the screen before him.

"But making curry will involve chopping." Haruhi's pen paused in its writing while she pondered aloud.

"Chopping will involve… knives." The pen was laid down on the table, as a completely new equation presented itself to Haruhi.

"Tamaki-sempai. Sharp knives. Tamaki-sempai and sharp knives."

Kyouya threw her a look over the rim of his glasses.

"Oh," Haruhi said.

Without haste, the girl separated the limbs she considered hers from the tangle (Tamaki-survival-skills also applied to the twins.), stood up and went over to the cupboard.

The twins looked after her.

"Well," Hikaru started.

"Yes," Kaoru continued.

They stared at each other and grinned, shrugging. "The game was fun while it lasted."

In the meantime, Haruhi had retrieved a slightly battered box from the depths of the cupboard and closed it again.

"What's that, Haru-chan?" asked Hunny, sitting at his place at the table, his face completely covered in cake crumbs, another piece already on the way to his mouth.

The girl twisted around. "It's for…"

A scream resonated around the room. It sounded suspiciously as if it had come from within the kitchen.

"…precisely that." Haruhi finished.

Twenty-nine minutes past four, Haruhi entered the kitchen, the box hefted under her right arm.

And saw red.

"Tamaki-sempai?" the girl asked of the crumbled form lying under the small kitchen table.

"How exactly did you manage to coat the stove in… tomato paste?

The form twitched.

Haruhi kneeled down next to him and placed the box close to her on the floor.

The form twitched another time and finally, a weak voice croaked up. "My daughter? Is that you? I can't see… The light is getting weaker… I am so cold."

Her gaze swept over his form and the knife lying next to him.

"Are you hurt?" she ventured.

"Yes!" Tamaki cried, voice not weak at all of a sudden, and presented her his trembling forefinger. "I am bleeding!"

Haruhi cocked her head to the side, squinted at the finger and finally perceived a tiny nick.

All she had to do was practically poke herself in the eye with Tamaki's finger to see it.

"Bleeding!" Tamaki insisted. "Bleeding to death! Haruhi, my only daughter, I want you to know I have always lo-"

Something was taken out of the box and wrapped around his 'bleeding to death'-wound.

Tamaki stared at the band-aid on his finger and stuttered. "-nged for… for… a frying pan!"

Haruhi raised her eyebrows and closed the box again.

"Yes… eh…" he continued, not so sure of his death anymore. "Frying pans are so greasy and uh… so handy."

At seeing Haruhi's doubtful look he put his 'not bleeding to death anymore'-finger above his heart and intoned: "My sweet frying pan, oh, how I do love your greasy handiness so."

By now, his face had acquired an interesting shade of red.

"That's… nice, I guess, Tamaki-sempai," the girl said and offered him her hand to help him stand up.

Together they got up and Tamaki looked toward Haruhi.

"Um… now that the topic has come up..." He shifted from foot to foot. "There is something I have to tell you."

Haruhi gazed up at him with big brown eyes, waiting.

Tamaki swallowed.

"You see… it's like this…" His eyes avoided hers studiously. "I lo… I lo…"

"Yes?" she asked, with just a tiny hint of irritation.

"I… lo…" Tamaki shut his eyes, and concentrated on swallowing again and bracing himself for what was going to happen when he revealed his secret to Haruhi.

So, after enough swallowing and bracing, he shouted: "I lo… I lost your frying pan!"

Haruhi stared at him blankly for a moment, before she asked: "How can you lose a frying pan?"

"Yes… eh…" Tamaki told the floor at his feet. "You see, it was very funny and it involved… a tea infuser."

Haruhi blinked. "We have no tea infuser."

Tamaki scratched the back of his tomato paste covered head. "That was kind of… the problem."

He swallowed and braced himself again, just to be on the safe side. "And I also want to mention that I am five shades of sorry, sorry, so sorry, sorry, sorry, so-"

The girl opened her mouth to say something, yet closed it instead again.

Lightning illuminated the room.

And if Tamaki noticed Haruhi shut her eyes close tightly, he just made sure he continued to make enough noise around her to drown out even the sound of thunder.

Ten minutes before five, Haruhi marched back into the living room, shut the box into the cupboard again and plonked down in her place between Kaoru and Hikaru.

A second later, Tamaki trailed after her into the room, a bowl of something red and black in his hands.

The twins exchanged a look over Haruhi's rigid stance and her tense grip on her pen as she began to write.

In unison, their gazes swivelled to Tamaki.

"Our toy seems… unhappy," remarked Kaoru.

"And I wonder why is that, don't you, Tono?" stated Hikaru lazily and his voice had just an edge of something sharp.

At that moment, Tamaki experienced the usually very pleasant feeling of having all the eyes in the room (with the exception of Haruhi's) on his person.

It wasn't pleasant at all.

"Er..." he began. "I lost the frying pan."

There was a beat of silence.

Then, the twins burst out laughing, while a confused Hunny piped up with: "But how can you lose a frying pan?"

Even though Kyouya's attention went back to his laptop, a corner of his mouth twitched suspiciously.

Mori shrugged in response to his cousin's question and glanced at the only girl in the room and Host Club.

Haruhi tried to find the concentration necessary for advanced algebra.

"Hey!" Tamaki shook his bandaged finger back and forth like a prize. "I just had a near death experience; be more considerate towards me! Tell them, Haruhi!"

Instead of concentration, Haruhi found distraction that can only be provided in form of a voice trained in advanced rich bastard nagging.

So, Haruhi rolled her eyes at Tamaki.

The twins laughed all the harder, clutching their stomachs with their arms.

"Mother!" Tamaki exclaimed and turned to Kyouya to seek his help, only to find that Kyouya's gaze already rested on him.

"I must admit I never even considered," Kyouya looked thoughtfully at the band-aid on Tamaki's finger.

"The sales for your pictures would skyrocket, if you were to meet your unfortunate… of course completely incidental… demise."

A hush settled in the room.

Tamaki squeaked, just once.

The twins' laughter turned into nervous coughing.

Hunny patted Tamaki's shins consolingly with sugar-sticky fingers.

Mori instinctively put one arm between Kyouya and Hunny.

Haruhi shivered and wondered if the temperature of the room had dropped suddenly.

Kyouya seemed oblivious to it all, as he typed a memo on his laptop.

"Naturally, Haruhi," he mentioned conversationally, "There will be an accretion to your debt."

The rest of the Host Club put some distance between themselves and Kyouya (and left Haruhi to fend for herself) at hearing his purposefully polite tone.

There was a brief suicidal moment, too short to actually register on her mind, in which Haruhi was tempted to throw her hands up into the air and ask 'So? What's new?'.

However, as she was not suicidal nor entirely sure she wanted to see exactly how much her debt could grow in one day and a fit of childish temper; common sense quickly overruled the quiet spark of indignation she felt.

"Your lacking kitchen security endangered the capability of one of our hosts to perform."

Kyouya's lips stretched into what could be considered either a smile or a smirk.

"Accumulating the possible resulting loss of profits this could have meant for our club, I would say we are at an accretion of about 850.000 yen."

At that point, Haruhi's gaze went to the window, the rain pouring down heavily against the glass.

All the while, she wondered what exactly Kyouya would consider appropriate 'kitchen security' for Tamaki.

A throng of professional kitchen servants and a toy stove?

And besides, weren't debts supposed to diminish, not grow?

"For not paying attention, there will be due an additional 5000 Yen," Kyouya made a note on his laptop and Haruhi's head snapped back into his direction.

"Ah, so you were paying attention. Well, in that case it will only be another 3000 Yen. As a host you need to learn to make your guests feel attended to."

Apparently her debt was a special case and she had to put a stop to yet another one of Kyouya's random debt addition sprees.

Otherwise, he would start charging her for not maintaining her 100 feet distance from expensive, fragile objects that kept appearing randomly around her. (Strangely enough, more often than not, they were Ootori family heirlooms.)

Again.

Thus, Haruhi went to stand up.

An especially loud clap of thunder roared around the room.

And if Kyouya noticed Haruhi halt and catch her breath, he just made sure to serve both their merits and kept on distracting her from the storm outside by charging her with a newly introduced 50 feet distance to breakable objects (which just so happened to be a Ootori family heirloom, he had brought with him, completely coincidentally, of course).

Seventeen minutes past five, Haruhi's debt had achieved its recent all time record high.

A new eight-digit number looming above her head, still some shards of another Ootori family heirloom gone to pieces at her feet, the girl made the brave attempt to focus instead on the numbers in her math book.

The twins wisely had left her in peace for the moment. (There were Haruhi-survival skills to be acquired, after all.)

Currently, they were busy inspecting the contents of the bowl in Tamaki's hands up close.

"Okay," both said in the end. "We give up. What is this?"

"This," Tamaki informed them and puffed out his chest proudly, "is a divine dish made by my very own hands."

Kaoru lifted a single eyebrow. "It's… food? Well, that was unexpected."

There was a shrug from Hikaru. "It looks like tomato paste scratched from a stove."

"Burned tomato paste at that," his twin observed with a sniff and a frown.

Tamaki twitched. "It's food, I tell you. Tamaki's special commoner's curry!"

The twins looked at each other out of the corner of their eyes.

And smirked.

A nimble sleight of hand trick later, the bowl found itself in the possession of the twins.

Tamaki screeched.

They turned the bowl over and gave it an experimentally shake.

The contents didn't move an inch.

Kaoru turned the bowl back over again, examined the glue like sticks imitating coal in the bowl, and snorted. "Very special, indeed, Tono."

Tamaki claimed the bowl back out of Kaoru's hands and cradled it close to his chest. "It was made with love and we will all eat it lovingly!"

All of a sudden, it occurred to Tamaki that one twin was strangely silent and searched for him with his eyes.

Just to find said twin snapping his mobile phone shut.

"What… did you just do, you traitorous imp?" Tamaki asked with shaking hands.

Hikaru shrugged nonchalantly and answered. "I ordered food. Real food. Bought with money and, best of all, we will all eat it without getting food poisoning."

Tamaki twitched once more, threw the bowl at the twins and declared war.

And while another bout of screaming and teasing and the destruction of the Fujioka living room ensued, Kyouya's typing hammered loudly in Haruhi's ears and even Mori's silent presence grated on her nerves.

Twenty minutes before six, Haruhi admitted defeat in front of the overwhelming odds of the rich bastards' quirks united, laid her pen down for the final time that day and let her head soon follow on the table.

The cold surface under her forehead felt kind of nice.

At least, that is, until the typing stopped and a calm voice rang in her ears above the noise inside the room and outside the flat.

"Another 2000 yen for laziness unsuited for in a host."

The typing resumed.

Haruhi wondered if banging her head on the table would feel just as nice and what the price tag on that particular way of action would be.

She was about to try when a voice piped up, so soft it was almost not annoying.

"Haru-chan?"

The girl lifted her head up.

Hunny waved his white package at her. "There is still a piece of cake left. Strawberry, too," he chirped and leaned in to whisper excitedly into her ears. "We can share!"

In an instant, there was something pressing against her lips and Haruhi found herself biting, chewing, swallowing and tasting.

'Sweet,' was the single thing her taste buds managed to project back to her.

The package deposited on the floor, Hunny climbed into an unresisting Haruhi's lap.

One hand holding his half of the piece of cake, the other clinging to Bun-Bun., Hunny hugged Haruhi.

It was an awkward sticky attempt at making limbs fit together.

Haruhi closed her eyes, still tasting sugar on her tongue and sighed without really meaning to.

Fingers nearly as coldly nice as the table wandered across her cheek, and from time to time she felt soft fabric (Bun-Bun, her mind tiredly supplied.) or clammy bits and pieces (Hunny's half of the cake) brushing against her skin.

"I like this better than when your face is all serious," Hunny told her, seemingly about to start bouncing up and down in her lap.

"Mhm," she mumbled and pressed her forehead against his.

Rain knocked against the living room window, a bolt of lightning invited itself in and thunder followed.

And if Hunny noticed the hard edges creeping back unto Haruhi's face, he just made sure to give her his half of the last piece of cake, as well.

Four minutes past eight, Haruhi half-closed the living room door behind her as she left the room and encountered her father coming just back from work.

She made a weary motion at him that could be translated into a wave and a nod.

Ranka shrugged out of his coat, hung it up and took in his daughter's crinkled clothes and the dropping of her eyes (and were those cake crumbs in her mussed up hair?).

"You had some not fun, eh?"

Haruhi glared at him.

"Don't worry; I will make us some tea."

The girl watched as her father's form disappeared into the kitchen.

It took a few seconds for her brain, tired out by half a day of the Host Clubs antics at its best, to process this.

When she did, her eyes widened.

"Dad!" Haruhi cried oddly hushed.

Ranka poked his head back out of the kitchen door frame.

"Haruhi, dear cute daughter of mine, pray tell…" he began and his eyes held a strange glimmer. "Why exactly does our stove look as if someone had scratched tomato paste from it? Burned tomato paste at that?"

Haruhi took a moment to answer.

That was all the response Ranka needed. "It was bug boy, wasn't it?"

Haruhi put a hand to her heavily throbbing temples. "Yes… he lost our frying pan."

Ranka batted his heavily made up lashes at his daughter.

"Putting my more than hateful (and completely justified!) feelings for the boy aside for a moment and already knowing I will regret even asking… but…"

One of the corners of his mouth started to twitch dangerously.

"…How can you lose a frying pan?"

"He said it involved a tea infuser."

Ranka blinked. "But we have no tea infuser!"

"Yes, that seemed to be the problem," his daughter said with a shrug.

The hands at Ranka's side balled into fists and he eyed the half-opened living room door with the peculiar interest of yet another bug extinction waiting to happen.

Haruhi groaned. "Please don't. I just finished putting them to bed."

More out of surprise than anything else the extinction was delayed when Ranka's whole attention went to his daughter. "They are… sleeping? All of them; already? And… on the floor?"

"Apparently, the systematic destruction of our furniture and my future took a lot out of them."

"You told them it was a special commoner's tradition, didn't you?" Ranka remarked as he observed his daughter almost dropping to the floor on the spot.

Haruhi began to massage her temples. "…Yes."

At this, Ranka snickered and didn't even try to mask it as a cough.

"Anyway," he decided to take pity on his daughter and hugged her, "I will be in my room if you need me."

With that he let go of her, disappeared behind his door and left her to desperately needed almost silence.

Haruhi sighed.

And if she noticed a small lightning bolt flash outside the flat, followed by a last weak thunderclap, she just made sure to take a look into the living room, at the forms of six sleeping boys.

On a warm Saturday night, exactly twenty-three minutes past eight, Haruhi allowed herself the tiniest of smiles.

(Then she tripped over a lost frying pan, woke up the whole Host Club, summoned her dad from his room and the chaos her life was as of now ensued in full noisy volume once more.)


End file.
